It had started as a major fixer-upper that just so happened to be the right size and price. Over time, we’d carefully turned it into something that felt lived-in and familiar.
A big, updated kitchen for me to cook in. Never-ending, floor-to-ceiling built-in bookcases. Cat trees. Dog beds. Trinkets from trips we’d taken. Family pictures.
There was nowhere on Earth I’d rather be than this home we’d created. Though I did occasionally miss the love nest over the pawnshop since Liam started renting it out.
“What do you want for dinner?” I asked as Alara stuck a bookmark between the pages and watched me.
“Whatever will make you sluttily roll up your sleeves,” she said, making a chuckle escape me before we both fell quiet at the doorbell.
“If that is Brio with another animal…” I said, shaking my head.
We still had our black cat Binx, who practically lived in Charlotte’s room since that was his person.
We’d actually let Tuna leave with Liam because, as much as it hurt Alara to let him go, we all knew that the dog had bonded hard with Liam, and making him lose him would have been unfair. Liam still dropped him off at the pawnshop every day so he could work, so he and Alara sort of had joint custody of the dog.
But after he was gone, Brio decided that meant we had plenty of room for other small, ornery, former street dogs.
Which, apparently, we did. Since we now had three of them.
“I got it!” Charlotte called, running out of her room in a sundress she had not been wearing when she came home from school an hour ago. I was pretty sure she’d put on makeup too.
I had a sinking feeling I knew the person on the other side of the door was a young guy who wouldn’t deserve her in any way, shape, or form.
The door pulled open.
And I was right.
He was tall, blond, and good-looking in the way that said he turned all the heads in school.
Great.
“Hey, just give me one second,” Charlotte said, bouncing across the living room to grab her messenger bag and shoving a book and her laptop into it.
The guy stood in the doorway, offering me a wave and a “Sir” that was meant to be respectful but didn’t soften my urge tostride across the room, shove him into the hall, and demand he leave my niece alone.
“We’re just going to the bookstore to study,” Charlotte announced. “I’ll be back for dinner. Ready to get that D up to a respectable B?” she asked, breezing past the guy.
Then she was gone, with the kid trailing behind her with a small smile tugging at his lips.
I didn’t realize a growl escaped me until Alara whipped over the back of the couch, eyes and mouth wide.
“Do you know who that was?”
“I don’t think I want to.”
“Oh, please, your hand is already in your pocket, texting Zeno to run a background check on him.”
That wasn’t a bad idea.
“Who is it?”
“That wasAsher Morgan.”
“I’m supposed to know who that is?”
“The boy Charlotte had to do a book report with five years ago. God, she bossed the hell out of him to get him to participate. And he clearly kind of liked it.”
“I remember the book report.” And commiserating with Liam that neither of us liked the kid she worked with. “But I haven’t really heard her mention him since.”
